DEADLY LAND MINES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1941, Page 8

DEADLY LAND MINES

MASS PRODUCTION ACROSS TASMAN. Among the new weapons of war which are now being made in Australia, as part of the Commonwealth’s huge armament programme are the world’s most modern types of land mines. Hundreds of thousands of these small but deadly obstacles, designed to impede the advance of enemy infantry and tanks, are being turned out by mass production in an Adelaide factory. The first of these land mines were primitive affairs, being little more than jam tins filled with explosives, and fitted with a simple form of detonator. They were used by the Republican forces in Spain to bar the advance of enemy tanks, whose caterpillar tracks were broken if they passed, over one of the obstacles. The idea was seized upon and developed secretly by most of the Great Powers. Little was heard of them, however, until the Battle of Bardia, in the Libyan campaign early last month, when war correspondents reported their use by the Italians. After the fall, of Tobruk references to Italian land mines became more frequent in despatches from the Libyan front. Land mines were being manufactured in Australia long before their use by the Italians became known. One of the first to be produced was publicly exhibited in Adelaide last October when the South Australian War Loan Committee arranged a shop window display of all the varieties of munitions and Army and Air Force equipment then being produced in the workshops of the State.